Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series starts Jan. 24

Diego Jarquín, research assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture, will present this spring's first Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Jan. 24.
Diego Jarquín, research assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture, will present this spring's first Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Jan. 24.

This spring’s Agronomy and Horticulture Seminar Series begins with “Reflections, Misconceptions and Other Issues in Plant Breeding Applications: From Sparsity to Sparse Testing, Noise Prediction and Other Unexplored Topics” presented by Nebraska’s Diego Jarquín Jan. 24.

Jarquín, research assistant professor of agronomy and horticulture, will talk about new technologies that enable us to collect multiple types of sources of information that were not available before.

He will present work demonstrating how the utilization and integration of these data require the development of new methodology to cope with the complexity of the data. In this presentation, Jarquín will introduce some new techniques that can potentially be deployed to leverage already existing plant breeding applications.

This seminar will be streamed and recorded.

Each talk is in Keim Hall, Room 150, at 3:30 p.m. and can also be watched online, unless otherwise noted. All seminars are free and open to the public and refreshments will be served at 3 p.m.

Dates and topics for the series are as follows:

  • Jan. 31: “Developing and Applying Genomic Tools for Soybean Improvement,” David Hyten, associate professor and Haskins Professor of Plant Genetics, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
  • Feb. 7: “Developing Strategies for Improving Abiotic Stress Tolerance of Photosynthetic Apparatus in Crops Grown for Food and Fuels,” Katarzyna Glowacka, assistant professor, Department of Biochemistry, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
  • Feb. 14: “Connecting Root Exudate Variation in Corn to Microbial Recruitment and Growth,” Tessa Durham Brooks, associate professor of Biology, Doane University, Crete. Video will not be available for this seminar.
  • Feb. 21: “Screening for Early Warnings of Large-Scale Vegetation Transitions,” Dirac Twidwell, associate professor, Department of Agronomy and Horticulture, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.
  • Feb. 28: “USDA — Achieving More Together: Partnership Success Between UNL and the Natural Resources Conservation Service and Future Opportunities,” Neil Dominy, state soil scientist, Partnerships and Initiatives, USDA-NRCS.
  • March 6: “Molecular Switches in Plant Sulfur and Redox Metabolism,” Joseph Jez, chair, Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor, Department of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis.
  • March 13: “Metabolic Engineering of Lignin for Advancing Agricultural Sustainability and the New Bioeconomy,” Richard Dixon, Distinguished Research Professor, BioDiscovery Institute, Department of Biological Sciences, University of North Texas, Denton.
  • April 3: “Who's Learning From Who? Integrating Farmer Perspectives into Research and the Classroom,” Randa Jabbour, associate professor of agroecology, Department of Plant Sciences, University of Wyoming, Laramie.
  • April 10: “Soil Microbial Dynamics, Climate Change and Management Effects on Soil Carbon and Nitrogen Retention in Agroecosystems,” Sean Schaeffer, associate professor, Department of Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
  • April 17: “Culture, Horticulture, and Wild Relatives of Croatia,” John Preece, supervisory research leader/horticulturist, National Clonal Germplasm Repository, University of California, Davis and National Arid Land Plant Genetic Resources Unit, Parlier, California, USDA-ARS.

More details at: https://agronomy.unl.edu/seminars